Presentation

Presentation requires practice. Sometimes, it is hard for me to do. An important thing is to memorise the materials, learn it by heart!! It may be because I have got too old, recently I feel that memorising sentences is quite difficult to me, though. There must be no way to improve without practicing. I shall work hard...

Inter-organisational Relationship

Most of NGOs are individually small in terms of scale and
impact they can deliver. Knowledge bases on which they
have to depend may also inadequate enough to make them
sustainable. Thus, networking among NGOs are one of the
most critical issues. Since I have been interested in
organisational behaviour of the entities acting within the
field of international development, I would like to
conduct my research from the perspective of
inter-organisational relationships. For NGO management,
networking contains several issues such as collaborative
action, learning from other organisations, and niche
specialisation. How can NGOs develop their capacity of
networking? How can they make their own staff motivated in
quite aligned manner with the organisational core value?
So, analysis from the perspective of organisational
behaviour may be able to present us at least some
implication.

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When we discuss entrepreneurial roles of NGO, it seems to
me that a certain aspects of business management such as
capital life cycle, return on investment, and so on, need
to be referred to.

Research Methods

Although I am just a beginner in academic research, I have come to think that current research methods must be different from those in the past. Since I am doing document research, this posting exclusively deals with document research among other things. The most impressive thing is penetration of computers and Adobe Reader in document research. Also, rapid development of the search engines is tremendous. Just putting a few keywords, we can find a number of candidate documents which have relevance to what we are researching. After down loading several documents in PDF format, we may find spesific parts in each document with search function attached to Adobe Reader without reading the whole document. This can significantly help us save time in going through documents. However, I have come to think of a question if it helps improve quality of our research? Because I am in between classical belief in labour intensive activities and highly developed information technologies, I have been impressed with easiness of gathering information at the same time feeling something sceptical about how much sufficiently readers may understand what the authors mean in respective articles. We must secure evidence as much as possible. But, the quality of research must not be in proportionate relation to the number of articles we put in the bibliography. The technique in how to find as many relevant documents as possible in a given time frame is important. However, I do not believe that quality of document research can be determined by the number of documents searched. In a master level programme, we are required to do several tasks such as document research, presentation, and class discussion. It must mean that participants are required to develop each of those capacities, and talented people will properly assess what the participants have acquired. Though I myself do not care so much about those assessments, I cannot help wondering if the participants can be expected to bring about any better social change than we see now through what they will have learned through highly electronically developed research methods.

Will the aid industry survive?

Since I started studying in Manchester, the feeling that accumulation of theoretical knowledge on international development in Japan seems even less than that of any developed countries has been growing. That may partially be because the history of development studies in Japan are not so long as that in European countries. Because of its inter-disciplinery nature, development had seemed to be discussed in respective relevant disciplines such as civil engineering, agriculture, and so on, in Japan. This historical discourse of development studies in Japan may be reflected in one of the most prominent characteristics of Japanese development assistance: advantages in relatively larger scale infrastructure development. As it has been famous for high quality of technology, Japan's development assistance has been concentrated on infrastructure development projects, or provision of high-tech equipment, which is often criticised of high costs of operation & maintenance, thus, unsustainability. Through my experience in Africa, individual infrastructure projects are still excellent, Japanese engineers' professionalism are impressively absorbed in local engineers'/ workers' way of working. Hence, from the perspective of very micro level, technical transfer is undoubtedly occuring. However, it is far possible to state that Japanese technical assistance has done very well. Why?
From my impression, this might come from our disadvantage in conceptualisation. Since development as well as technology transfer is closely related to contextual issues such as policy, political stability, history, culture, customs, economic situation, climate, and so on, from its inception, development projects need to take account of these issues as well as technology-specific ones. Although it might not be so hard to feel the existence of those contextual issues, it is not so easy to construct all those issues in order, and to organise a comprehensive design for development project. Through my very short experience of academic activities at IDPM, I've noticed that the number of models(?) for theoretical analysis can definitely affect the quickness and quality of conceptual discussion. When I reflect on Japanese academic fields, especially for disciplines in humanities, I can rarely point out theories originated in my country. It may be quite natural if remembering how the modern academic has developed from the second half of the 19th century in Japan. It seems to me that the people at that time in Japan were too busy to think of the relationships between their own identities and the ideas/ theories being imported from the Western developed nations...

Will the aid industry survive?

I started my career in the aid industry with domestic administrative works in Japan. Since then, I was mainly based in Japan. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was given the opprotunity working in Zambia from 2000 to 2003. Why was it fortunate, and at the same time unfortunate? This might be because there were various movements such as PRSP formulation, Sector-wide Approaches, and continued currency of privatisation while I stayed there. As just one of the strangers there, I could not seize what was going on for what purposes. On the other hand, the stay in such a busy place of the aid industry, gave me opprotunities to spend some time with various stakeholders such as World Bank, DfID and other like-minded donor countries, UDAID or NGOs. Through that experience, at first hand, I could not help feel that Japanese aid industry was far behind the international movements of aid industry. This might have been due to physical distance to Africa, where I worked. The major reasons seemed, however, to be found in lack of their seriousness to international development. As the second biggest contributor in the aid industry, it has been apperent that Japanese governemnt concerned about its presence in the international arena. But, this could never be understood as its seriousness. The fact that Japan has been one of the biggest contributors to aid industry has never properly be fed back to Japanese nationals. What does it mean? To me, it is a clear evidence that the Japanese had not made significant efforts in the international political arena, in which aid is apparently conducted. As I mentioned above, the Japanese government's concern has been just its presence, in other words, how often the words 'Japansese' have been referred to.

Introduction

I am an MA student in International Development (Development Management) at the University of Manchester.
I have workd for a Japanese foundation, which assists in implemeting the Official Development Assistance of Japanese Government, for more than 11 years.
I stayed in Zambia from October 2000 to August 2003, and worked for agriculture, education and infrastructure development.
After going back to my country, I was in charge of internal security issues, and internal information systems.
In response to the terrible disaster caused by the great earthquake in Indonesia and the following tsunami to the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean, I worked for the Maldives to assist their efforts at recovery from January to April 2005.
Through my experiences in the field of international development, I've got interested in the procedures of development assistance being provided by bilateral donors and multilateral institutions.
The course I am taking contains analyses of development theories or policies since the end of WWII as well as management of the organisations which work for international development. So far, I've found it very useful because even those knowledge about theories and policies will help me deal with management issues when I could have opprotunities to work in any development organisations in the future.
One of the purpose of this blog is to review my own opinions or understanding on international development.
I am also wishing that the contents in this blog may be utilised in sharing knowledge with as many poeple who are interested in international development as possible.